8/14/2019 Dispelling the Darkness-Deepak Chopra

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DISPELLING THE DARKNESS

I knew everything about medicine and almost nothing about healing.

IT'S BEAUTIFUL UP here, sitting on a plane staring at clouds. Or should I say, it's still

 beautiful? There are invisible dangers in the atmosphere. The toxic breath of industry, the

careless debris of The Good Life being led down below. I know this, yet these white billows,

rank upon rank, look so pure that for a moment one forgets.

Thirty-five years ago, on a long migration from India to America, I wasn't worried about the

clouds getting dirty and poisoned. I wasn't worried about anything. That trip was all excitement

and confidence. I had a new bride by my side and a job offer clutched in my hand. Everyambitious young man I knew back in Delhi was facing West, and when word got out that theVietnam War had created a doctor shortage in the US, I couldn't wait to make the leap. I expected

The Good Life to come my way, and it did. I expected The Good Life to make me happy, but it

didn't.

I put in almost twenty years of effort to prove both things to myself. Camped out in a threadbare

 New Jersey motel that first night, I switched on a colour television for the first time in my life

and saw a bloody victim of gangland violence being rushed to the hospital. Oh my God, they

were taking him to the emergency room I would be working in tomorrow. In a sense those fewingredients - patients in need, colour TVs, and rushing from one hospital to the next - became

hallmarks of my new existence.

But by 1980 I felt adrift, seeing myself as someone who knew everything about medicine and

almost nothing about healing. After casting about aimlessly, I did something none of my Indianfriends were doing: I turned my face East again. Not just out of personal restlessness. Not just to

find God, because that wasn't my intent. I kept thinking about something else: why does the

 pursuit of happiness make us so unhappy? I had devoted myself to finding happiness, yet alooming, warning figure stood in my way.

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That figure was the guru. Westerners glamorise gurus into spiritual superstars or demonise them

as arrant charlatans. But in India a guru is more like your conscience. Strictly speaking, the

Sanskrit word guru means dispeller of darkness, but in everyday life gurus are like a nagginginner voice reminding you that there are higher things to live for. Needless to say, gurus don't

equate with The Good Life.

We are guilty in India of using gurus as spiritual anodynes, harmless as an English vicar but good

for the soul. I decided to take them seriously, because for centuries the gurus have painted a clear  picture: there are two ways to live - one is the pursuit of pleasure, the other is the pursuit of 

moksha, or liberation. The two roads sharply diverge, which is why The Good Life and gurus

don't mix. I had proved to myself that pleasure, in and of itself, leads to exhaustion and inner deterioration. What could the guru offer instead?

I won't recap my years with Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, except to say that the impact of a guru was

everything I had hoped for and more. I found inner discipline and silence, not as ends in

themselves but as openings to a great, unknown subtle realm that permeates nature. Next, I came

to trust in another face of the guru, known as upaguru, or the teacher who is close by. Upagurucan be anyone or anything; whatever experience brings a flash of insight, a small step towards

liberation. I have sat in lonely hotel rooms in Paraguay or Dubai and idly turned on thetelevision, only to have the next image on the screen bring a sudden epiphany.

ONCE YOU ARE committed to dispelling your own darkness, guru is everywhere. After thirty-

five years on the path, this has proved the most valuable lesson. And now I believe it is the

lesson humanity has to learn. Why is our planet on the verge of ecological catastrophe? Becauseeveryone wants The Good Life. They want it in Khartoum as much as in midtown Manhattan. As

long as The Good Life means sensual pleasure, the acquisition of cars, houses, planes, boats,

vacations, jet skis, and so on, we are in peril.

Staring at the clouds today, I see guru. The message of the clouds is the same as the message of Vasishtha or Ramana Maharshi or any other true guru: See yourself anew. We will not save the

 planet so long as we see ourselves through old eyes. If humans are animals that insatiably crave

 pleasure, we are lost. But happiness can be defined by the other road, the pursuit of liberation. Iwill never be free as long as I am an isolated individual struggling against nature. Freedom

comes from surrender, and the first surrender must be to nature itself.

 Nature is a cloud. It has no boundaries. It is incredibly pure and beautiful. Its motions are

unpredictable. Clouds are always here, yet they appear and disappear, seemingly at random,always in the service of life. To adopt such an existence for ourselves is possible. Humans have

always been sky-watchers: we have identified with what lies beyond the clouds.

So the guru's choice remains as clear as ever. I don't imagine that anyone will buy prime-time ad

space to declare that upaguru is the way of the future. But revolutions crop up unexpectedly (likeclouds, once again), and I believe the present ecological crisis has its inner dimension. The next

revolution, the one that will save us, will arise inside. When it does, humanity will experience

itself in a new way, and when our descendants gaze at the clouds, still beautiful and pure, theywill murmur to themselves, "Ah, it's true. I am that."